Animals at ECCC

Those of you who’ll be at the Emerald City Comicon this weekend will get first crack at these sweet little 5×7″ giclee prints from my Heifer International series. Come get ‘em at Table F-07!

They are easy to frame and easy to love, and they won’t go on sale at my store until after the convention.

If they do well, I’d like to gradually release the whole series in print form and donate a percentage of profit to Heifer.  So stop on by!

Update! See you in Seattle!

Page 173 now online!

Heeeey it’s a page.  Another bruiser of a week, gang.  April!  April will be the month where things start to go my way! Oh well, at least Luther seems to be doing well for the moment.  We can be confident that will end soon.

But, most importantly, I’ll be in Seattle this weekend at the Emerald City Comicon.  Come visit me at Table F-07, right next to Erika and much of Periscope Studio.

I’ll have some snazzy new prints to sell – many featuring cute animals!  You want them, I know you do.

Family Man up…aw, you know. There’s a page.

Page 172 now online!

And here is another page.  There’s some more personal complication coming up – one surgery (not on me), the final dregs of a move (guys I own so many books and so many cats), the looming con season, several other projects which will come into maturity any moment now and demand all the attention, etc, but DAMMIT HERE IS A PAGE.

With a barn swallow.  Or a bit of one, anyway.

In the meantime, because I’m too harried to come up with many salient words right now, I’ve been occasionally dropping interesting pictures in my long-neglected Tumblr account.  If you enjoy pedantic imagery of the past, heave to!

Family Man update!

Page 171 now online.

There once was, and there will be again, a time where I post something other than just updates to the comic.  Now is not that time, however.  I’m working on getting myself feeling a little more grounded over all, which means I’m going to be scarcer than usual online for the next little bit, here.  (Dear everybody I’m currently working on stuff for:  it is, in fact, happening!)

Meanwhile, please enjoy another page in which wildlife gets the better of our young protagonists.  Next:  notes!

And now, to bed.

Family Man update!

Page 170 of Family man now online!

At last, at last, at laaaaast, an update.  Let’s not think about how long it’s going to take me to wind down from all the tea I’ve had tonight, shall we?  Some costs cannot be estimated.

What a month, guys.  I’m slowly digging my way out.

Take Care of Yourselves.

Hello, gang.

It’s a rough time for us here in the Northern hemisphere of developed world; we’re all accustomed to a smoother time than this, aren’t we? The economic woes and the wars and the darkness and the general feeling of societal dis-ease and distrust.

If you are a person (like many of us) who already deals with depression or other mental distress, or who has experienced specific pain and turbulence of late, no doubt those effects have only been underlined.  I myself have been swamped with grief and miasmic anxiety this past month.

In the last month, two members of my family have committed suicide (one indirectly, by way of longterm self-neglect and substance abuse; one very intentionally, after a long struggle with suicidal depression).  Two other acquaintances, people with active roles in their communities and a creative outlook on life, have also recently killed themselves.

Please, my dears.

If you’re struggling, if you are in pain, if the normal palliatives of family and friends and work and all those things we’re supposed to do to “cheer up” have failed you:  please, please please, please, seek help.

Whether that is calling a crisis line, seeking professional help (even if you’re uninsured and broke, it does exist), scheduling a check-in routine with somebody you trust, revamping an old medication, lightbox, or exercise regimen, talking to a spiritual adviser, going running with a friend, anything that counts as telling another person what is going on and asking for help in taking action:  please do it.

The world does need you.  Please do whatever it takes to keep you present and whole.

Find a social worker near you.
Call the national suicide prevention hotline to talk to somebody near you.
Search for health clinics near you, including free and low-cost.
GLBT-friendly therapists, spiritual support, and other resources.

Family Man update!

Page 169 now online!

Hell of a week, gang.  Sudden death in the family, moving to a new house, all that jazz.  But here is  page!  Huzzah.

More later.

Monday Morning Poem: A Hole in the Floor

A Hole in the Floor

for Rene Magritte

The carpenter’s made a hole
In the parlor floor, and I’m standing
Staring down into it now
At four o’clock in the evening,
As Schliemann stood when his shovel
Knocked on the crowns of Troy.

A clean-cut sawdust sparkles
On the grey, shaggy laths,
And here is a cluster of shavings
From the time when the floor was laid.
They are silvery-gold, the color
Of Hesperian apple-parings.

Kneeling, I look in under
Where the joists go into hiding.
A pure street, faintly littered
With bits and strokes of light,
Enters the long darkness
Where its parallels will meet.

The radiator-pipe
Rises in middle distance
Like a shuttered kiosk, standing
Where the only news is night.
Here’s it’s not painted green,
As it is in the visible world.

For God’s sake, what am I after?
Some treasure, or tiny garden?
Or that untrodden place,
The house’s very soul,
Where time has stored our footbeats
And the long skein of our voices?

Not these, but the buried strangeness
Which nourishes the known:
That spring from which the floor-lamp
Drinks now a wilder bloom,
Inflaming the damask love-seat
And the whole dangerous room.

– Richard Wilbur
photo by Jon Feinstein (site)

——-

Generally the poems I pick for the occasional Monday appearance are connected to something very literal in my life.  It’s a way for me to process happenings (from the silly to the significant) and recontextualize them however I feel the need.  Sometimes I know exactly the poem I need to post; just as often I simply type “[topic] poem” into the search field and keep sifting until the right thing presents itself, which it invariably does.  The oracle of Delphi had nothing on Googlemancy.

But, the literal-ness:  this past weekend I ripped up, often with considerable violence, a lot of old carpeting and linoleum in the home I’ll be officially moving into this month, to prepare it for brand new floors.  I am not designed to take such things unmetaphorically, and the bare board that the work exposed feels parallel to all the getting-started going on in my life at the moment, and to the “buried strangeness” that is the mysterious continuity of self in the face of flux.

Family Man: she updates!

Page 168 now online.

Behold!  I am reinstalled in my life here in Portland and almost out from under the massive backlog of orders, business chores and work; tomorrow I might even unpack the suitcase.  Luckily for my sanity, I get to ease back in with another one of these handy chapter transition images.  Next week we’ll have Luther and the library and hijinks will ensue.  Hurray!

Then the week after that I’ll be due for another round of page notes, although they might be a bit scanty given the hunting interlude.  (I do promise I’ll post links to the rabbit skinning tutorials I found on YouTube.  Like a banana, gang.  They peel like a damn banana.)

I’m still scrumming around for a reliable, quality printing company with good communication skills, located outside of this here continent (with prices to match).  If you’ve had any good or bad experiences printing a publication in four colors with an overseas printer, please pass that information my way, so I can locate a solid vendor and have a Family Man book for sale at San Diego this year.

Art sale!

Hey all!  I’m experiencing one of those Freelance Moments(tm) where I’m short on cash despite being heartily employed.  Solution:  art sale!

I traditionally hate parting with original art, particularly from comics projects and especially when it’s not an in-person sale; it’s a little easier when I design something to be given away or when I get to meet the person taking it home!

So this is your excellent chance to snag some art from me if you don’t typically make it to conventions.

Up for sale on Etsy, everything from convention doodles to original art from Click.

The scans are on the murky side so that you can see the pencil lines underneath the inking!  These are slightly visible in real life so you and your friends can TELL it’s original art.